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by Karel Roberts Ratnaweera

"He was a gentle soul." These words of US President George Bush on hearing of the news of the death of journalist Daniel Pearl a few days ago, were reflected, indeed some days before the president's tribute in a TV clip of the unfortunate victim seen sitting on the ground with someone standing close to him on his right, in what looked like a threatening gesture.

That clip said it all - he did look like a gentle soul. That was the first impression this writer got on seeing the picture. Pearl looked just that - 'a gentle soul,' and that was what made me fear that he looked doomed to the cruel fate that was inches from his head in that TV clip.

As this is written, the radio is giving more details about his end. On the work station before me is page 22 of today's Daily News, which carries more about Daniel Pearl. It appears that his wife Marianne is seven months pregnant with their first child. More's the pity; he never lived to see his child nor experience the joy of a father at such a time.

Likewise, Marianne will never experience the happiness of showing her husband her priceless gift to him, made by the two of them to produce Nature's greatest miracle of the birth of a child, not adopted or bought or borrowed for anyone's sake, but born naturally of a woman for the love of a man.

By now almost everyone who has read or heard or seen the news in whatever language, knows that Daniel Pearl was a journalist who made a name for himself on the Wall Street Journal, one of America's most reputed newspapers where, the report says he wrote quirky front page stories.

Daniel Pearl began his journalistic career in 1993 when from Atlanta he was shifted to the Washington office of the paper to cover transportation issues. He met his future wife on a weekend visit to Paris in 1999; her name indicates that she must be French.

Daniel, a name which is Jewish and is found in the Bible's Old Testament, became his newspaper's South Asia bureau chief about two years ago. Based in Bombay, he had recently been reporting out of Pakistan where he and his wife were staying.

Daniel, they say, was a journalist who had steadily made it through the ranks as a reporter; a lot of journalists have made it through the ranks, as we scribes know only too well.

Some fall by the wayside, some make it to the top and still others stick in the middle by some incomprehensible quirk of Fate.

The 38-year-old Pearl was born in New Jersey and moved to Los Angeles as a teenager. A graduate in Communications, he began reporting for a paper called The North Adams Transcript, which had a small circulation in the North Eastern state of Massachusetts, in 1985. He moved from paper to paper.

Daniel Pearl went missing on January 23 this year while on duty. He was working on a story on Reid, a man who allegedly tried to ignite his own shoes in an attempt to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic.

A journalist friend of Pearl's said that Pearl was a 'great guy,' a typically American style of description which sometimes leaves one wondering exactly why the subject was great.

President Bush's description of Daniel Pearl as 'a gentle soul' was decidedly better; it touched the right chord in the hearts of several other gentle souls who have and are being persecuted in the performance of their journalistic duties by those whose only souls lie under their shoes.

It is the description of Daniel Pearl as 'a gentle soul' that has inspired this appreciation. They say he never had a bad word for anyone; there is a saying that only the good die young.

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